Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi
by Cyclone
Summary: Interviews from the (in-universe) documentary series "Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi." A Protoculture Effect story.
1. Introduction

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi  
**_Introduction_

"Blue and red. Those are the colors of the blood that soaked the soil of Shanxi in one of the most momentous wars in Citadel history. Though the war only lasted three years, with relatively minor casualties compared to the Rachni Wars or the Krogan Rebellions, and was waged largely within a single system, the Relay War changed Citadel space forever.

"The codex tells us what happened. A deadly misunderstanding, fueled by fear, grew to engulf a world, with the resources of two of the mightiest militaries in the galaxy clashing after a disastrous first contact.

"But the codex doesn't tell us about the ones who fought that war. From the soldiers who battled through the streets of Taiyuan to the fighter pilots who flew over Telos to the crewmen whose ships dueled across the star system, these are their stories."


	2. The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 1

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi  
**_The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 1_

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"If you believe the vids, the Battle of Hunter Hill was a display of unrelenting heroism against impossible odds as Fox Company selflessly held off a brigade of turians in order to call in reinforcements from Space Station Freedom.

"And you know what? That's complete horseshit.

"Yeah, Hunter Hill had a comm relay, all right, and yeah, we did use it to call in a mayday to Freedom Station, but the fact is, the fold-comm there had been on the fritz for a month. Only reason we were out there was to repair the damn thing, and Captain Miller figured we'd turn it into a winter training exercise while we were at it. It may have been May on Earth, but that year, May was in the dead of winter on Shanxi.

"When the bonies landed, we had no idea what was going on and got cut off. We called for help from Freedom because that's the only place we could get in touch with; with the hard lines cut, the comm tower down, and all the jamming stopping our vehicle comms, we had no way to call in support from the Behemoth or the rest of the garrison.

"We were just trying to stay alive."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"I've got to hand it to the brass. I still don't know how, but they knew we were in for a tough fight when we hit Shanxi. They sent us in heavy, two full divisions. We detected the structures on Hunter Hill - we designated it Hill 120 - and General Thierix dispatched the 96th Assault Infantry Legion to clear it out. It seemed like overkill - there were only maybe a dozen vehicles there, and hangars for a few more - but we had our orders.

"Now, 'Assault Infantry' means we're a high mobility attack force that primarily fights on foot: five thousand soldiers riding Tyrus APCs, along with organic Mantis and Jiris support. We don't lay siege, and we don't fortify. We strike hard and fast and keep moving, going from one objective to the next. We had expected to take Hill 120 within a day.

"It's still hard to believe it was just a single company there. I don't care what anyone else says: The soldiers who held that hill are a rare breed, and the Alliance is lucky to have them."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"Most of the comm relay at Hunter Hill was actually underground. Sure, there was a comm tower up top with an antenna and dish, but that was for local transmissions and the orbital uplink with the defense sats. Naturally, the tower was the first thing to go, but the fold-comm itself was underground.

"The turians made a mistake, targeting the comm tower up top with their missile tanks first. With the tower down and the hard lines cut, we didn't have much choice _but_ to fight, and the missile strike came early enough to give us time to prep for 'em. It also made those missile tanks priority targets.

"Fox was a motorized infantry company. We had one platoon of Cycloners with Tornados for recon, and the rest of us had standard body armor and rode Grizzlies. The Grizzlies could carry ammo, but we had to be able to stay mobile with our weapons on foot too, which meant missile launchers for anti-mecha duty."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"Spirits, I'd never seen so many missiles before in my life. In the Hierarchy, it's standard for every platoon to have at least one anti-armor weapons team, and in some specialist units, there's a heavy weapon in each fire team. The humans? They made sure every single soldier had one.

"The little ones weren't too bad. They'd hit a Tyrus's shields and detonate, showering burning thermite all over the place. It pitted the armor, but didn't do much real damage. Even so, we had to stay buttoned up and couldn't return fire effectively, and if the shields were down, the missiles punched right through the armor and... well, thermite does nasty things to a packed crew or passenger compartment."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"The shields were a damn unpleasant surprise, let me tell you, but we had a surprise of our own. You see, the local CDM actually had a couple of fully functional Tomahawks stored there. The old relics came from some rich old collector who liked restoring antique mecha by way of his nephew. He donated them after inheriting them when the old man kicked the bucket, so I heard. Didn't matter, didn't care. Those destroids might have been old, but they still packed quite a wallop."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"Turian troops don't break. I'm sure you've heard that, and it's true. Don't get me wrong; we still feel fear, but if there's one thing about us you can rely on, it's our discipline. We may be absolutely terrified, but we won't get routed; we'll hold our position or fall back by the numbers.

"But those destroids... that's as close to panic as I've seen or heard of in the Hierarchy's entire history. We'd never seen anything even remotely like them before, and I'll admit, just looking at them scared a few of us, me included. There they stood, tall and menacing, the snow blowing around them, as impervious and uncaring as the old Valluvian titans. Some of us just couldn't believe what we were seeing, but others started laughing, and the humor spread the more we thought about it. The entire concept of a giant robot was ridiculous.

"Then they opened fire.

"The Jiris outriders were their first targets, those massive particle beams carving them up like a roast shatha. With them went the only weapons we had with the firepower to take those destroids down without unacceptable casualties.

"The problem was, we didn't know that at the time."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"The thing about the Tomahawk is that, while it's old, that meant it was built with old-school tech and priorities. None of the fancy layered anti-plasma plating and refractive laser-resistant coating and so on that we get now. The Tommy's armor was built to stop bullets and bombs, and that was it. That was all we knew how to do back then, and we did it well, and with robotech alloys helping out, that made them extraordinarily bullet resistant.

"And the turians... well, they didn't have anything else."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"The Tyrus's guns were hurting them, but not enough, and by then, the weather had kicked up, effectively grounding our gunships. The destroids had no trouble picking our APCs out of the snowstorm on thermals, and when the engine on ours got hit, the Ell-Tee had us dismount and spread out. That left us with another problem, though.

"Have you ever actually _tried_ to take down a destroid from on foot? It's not easy. You can only throw a satchel charge so far, and when your target's vitals are at least six meters off the ground, you stand a better chance of blowing yourself up than taking it down. A mobility kill isn't any easier. A destroid's legs are a damn sight tougher than a tank's tracks are, and they can step on you a lot more easily than a tank can run you over.

"Fact is, unless you've got a big missile or an even bigger gun, you're not taking that thing down without doing something insane. And we didn't have either.

"In retrospect, I should have known better when the Ell-Tee asked for volunteers."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"It should be noted that none of us were actually qualified on the Tommies, but the control layout wasn't too hard to figure out; same principles even our current mecha are built with. Maybe that lack of training's why we didn't notice what the bonies had planned until it was too late.

"Crazy bastard.

"Gotta give credit where it's due. We caught them off-guard, but not for long. Managed to toast the missile tanks and several of their APCs before they got their act together, but when they did, they did it in a big way. We didn't know what happened until the satchel charge blew out the right knee of one of the Tommies. One of the bonies had actually climbed up its leg to plant the damn thing.

"Busted leg's a pain in the ass, but we still held the high ground, and we were fighting defensively, so it didn't make all that much difference in the short term. Still, it threw us off our game."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"I still can't believe I pulled it off. I don't know what I was thinking when I volunteered for that shit. If it hadn't been for my hardsuit's eezo core, I'd have broken both my legs on the way down. Still, we managed a mobility kill and distracted them long enough for us to catch our breath. Colonel Atticus saw the writing on the wall and ordered us to fall back.

"It was the most disorganized mess of a retreat I'd ever had the displeasure of being part of. Those destroids had shattered our unit cohesion. In theory, that didn't matter; Assault Infantry's supposed to be fluid, able to link up with any other part of the legion and form an effective fighting force.

"On that hill, though, they went back to pelting us with those shoulder-fired missiles of theirs again, keeping us from regrouping. We didn't know it at the time, but they also had snipers picking us off with laser fire. We were trickling back in uncoordinated groups of two or three at a time, with barely any thought left for covering fire. It wasn't a rout, not exactly, but it was damned close.

"All told, after that first battle, the colonel had to merge what was left of my company with two others into a single over-strength company just to keep us combat effective, and we'd lost most of the Jirises and lost or had to abandon dozens of Tyruses."

* * *

**Codex: C77 Tyrus Infantry Fighting Vehicle**

The standard infantry fighting vehicle of the Turian Hierarchy, Armax Arsenal's C77 Tyrus has been in service in one form or another for the past eighty-seven years and served as the inspiration for the Alliance's M-35 Mako. Fully sealed against CBRN warfare, this 13-ton IFV can operate in almost any environment, and its powerful eezo core allows it to traverse almost any terrain, even climbing up sheer cliff faces. The Tyrus is armed with a 31.7mm turreted autocannon to provide direct fire support, and it can carry a dozen troops in its passenger compartment.

* * *

**Codex: Jiris Infantry Fighting Vehicle**

The Jiris infantry fighting vehicle is a light combat vehicle used by the Turian Hierarchy. In addition to its crew of two, the Jiris can only carry a single fire team of four troops and is therefore classified by the Alliance as a missile tank rather than as an IFV, despite its turian designation. Originally meant for reconnaissance, the Jiris was designed as a lightweight hovercraft to maximize its speed, maneuverability, and ability to handle varied surfaces, though it fares relatively poorly on extreme inclinations.

Even with mass effect technology, the Jiris cannot carry the weight of a traditional main gun and maintain its speed and maneuverability. Instead, it is armed with an MLRS-style missile turret capable of engaging targets up to twenty kilometers away; this range can be multiplied with the aid of a forward observer. This gives the Jiris a powerful punch, allowing it to engage targets of opportunity or provide indirect fire support as needed.

* * *

**Codex: M-29 Grizzly Armored Personnel Carrier**

The tough, rugged, and reliable M-29 Grizzly APC was once the standard battle-taxi of the UEDF and still serves with many garrisons and Colonial Defense Militias today. Unlike its successor, the larger Mako IFV, the Grizzly was built purely as an armored transport vehicle for unpowered troops, capable of carrying a squad of thirteen soldiers or Marines fully kitted out in standard body armor in addition to the driver, and its only armament is a single automated anti-missile laser turret that can also be controlled remotely from either the driver's seat or the squad leader's seat next to the driver. The Grizzly was designed to work alongside Cycloners, not carry them, and it cannot do so without extensive refit.

The Grizzly's caterpillar tracks and powerful drivetrain allow it to negotiate some of the toughest terrestrial terrain, but since it predates the Alliance's discovery of mass effect technology, it has no eezo core to manipulate its mass for true all-terrain capability, and its mass gives it trouble on soft terrain. The Grizzly's body, however, is carved out of a single solid slab of robotech alloy, giving it unprecedented battlefield survivability despite its lack of kinetic barriers and earning it the nickname "the Brick."

The Grizzly's biggest flaw remains its sheer mass. Despite a disposable "rocket cradle" that allows the Grizzly to be air-dropped safely from low altitudes, it is a difficult vehicle to deploy and recover, particularly if the track system suffers damage. This resulted in turian forces capturing a number of them on Shanxi, as retreating Alliance troops were forced to abandon their vehicles. After the Relay War, some Grizzlies have been refitted with small eezo cores, but this compromises the passenger capacity, cutting it down to seven passengers.


	3. The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 2

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi  
**_The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 2_

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"After a battle as disastrous as that first assault on Hill 120, in almost any other situation, we would have called in an orbital strike and wiped the target off the face of the planet.

"We didn't have that option.

"Now, most of the time, that would be because we needed to take the place intact or needed intel from the target.

"That wasn't the case this time.

"It was strange, fighting without orbital support. 'Victory goes to he who holds the high ground, and there is no higher ground than orbit.' That was one of the central tenets of turian military theory.

"I mean, we always knew the fleet could lose the orbitals, but the fleet hadn't lost a major engagement in any of our lifetimes, and frankly, if the fleet lost, we didn't expect to find out about it until we were on the wrong end of an orbital bombardment, but things on Shanxi were different.

"We didn't have control of orbit... but neither did the humans. That kind of balance was always theoretically possible, but we had never actually had to fight under those conditions before."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"When the turians pulled back, that gave us time to dig in. We couldn't fix the damaged Tommy with the resources we had, but we were able to get it into a more stable position, and it formed the core of the static defenses we set up. We'd built MG nests, trenches, pitfalls, whatever we could throw together.

"We also rigged up some Tango Nine in strategic locations for when things went south. Given we had lost contact with the defense sats and everyone else on the planet, we figured things going south was more a matter of how much further south things were going to go, rather than if or when they would.

"It wasn't much, but it was all we had. That, and prayer that the bonies didn't drop something heavy on us from orbit.

"Even with that possibility, we forted up as much as we could, because the old axiom still holds true - you can't take territory without boots on the ground - and even orbital superiority won't decide how things go on the surface of a planet.

"For the Citadel folks out there, the invid taught us that the hard way. When they took Earth, they put up protoplex barriers so strong we would have had to crack the planet to brute force our way through them. The Spacy can talk about orbital bombardment and planetary blockades all they want, but the fact is, control of a world is determined by what happens down in the mud."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"The first offensive on Hill 120 made it abundantly clear that a frontal assault wasn't going to work, and we had too little intel to come up with an alternative plan.

"General rule of thumb is that an attacker needs a three-to-one advantage to achieve a clean victory, assuming similar tech levels. But what we knew about Hill 120's defenders was mostly guesswork, and what we knew about their tech was even less.

"We needed intel, and we needed it badly.

"To this day, I still don't know if the Ell-Tee volunteered us, or if Colonel Atticus picked us at random, or if it was because of that stunt the Ell-Tee concocted that had me scampering up the leg of a twelve-meter metal giant trying to kill us all.

"However it went, our platoon wound up with the task of getting that intel."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"We couldn't cover every possible attack vector, not without going crazy from paranoia, but while Hunter Hill wasn't exactly in a box canyon, the terrain did favor a single approach, which we positioned the Tommies to cover. Other approaches were covered by sandbagged MG nests and riddled with trenches and pitfalls, and we had positioned mortar crews to provide indirect fire wherever needed.

"The snow kept our Cyclone platoon from setting up an outrider patrol or even riding to Taiyuan to call for reinforcements, so we positioned sniper teams to give us better coverage. It wasn't perfect, but we were hoping the bonies' lack of familiarity with the terrain would keep them from slipping past.

"It worked. Mostly."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"Turians aren't built for cold weather. Granted, that doesn't mean we can't handle it - it's not like we're ectothermic or anything like that - and our hardsuits are geared for some pretty fierce extremes, but we're never exactly what you'd call comfortable in it.

"I know what you're thinking. 'A winter assault on a fortified position by troops relatively ill-prepared for cold weather fighting...' Sounds like something out of a history book about what **not** to do, right?

"But it wasn't like that at all. We may not **like** cold weather, but the Hierarchy had bitter experience in far worse conditions than that during the Krogan Rebellions, and our training and equipment reflects that.

"So why bring up the weather? Because it was _(ERROR: TRANSLATION NOT FOUND)_ cold there, and I about froze my mandibles off crawling through the snow to get past those snipers, that's why!

"The lieutenant took most of the platoon to launch a diversionary attack - in theory, a probing strike to test their defenses - while my section went in covertly for a closer look.

"Slipping past the first defensive line wasn't as hard as it could have been. The Alliance troops there were spread pretty thin - though we didn't know that at the time - and they didn't really have enough time to set up a properly secured perimeter. The terrain helped too, as it was rugged enough to provide us with plenty of concealment; the trickiest part was the fact that we couldn't cross into their line of sight at all, even when they weren't looking, or the trail we were breaking through the snow would give us away.

"Eventually, we managed to secure a vantage point that let us survey most of Hill 120 and its surroundings. We couldn't quite see everything, but it was enough for us to gauge the defenses the humans were setting up.

"Then, of course, we had to go **back**."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"When the bonies hit us again the next day, it was pretty obvious that it wasn't a serious attempt to break through our lines. You don't send a platoon to do what a brigade failed to.

"Still, we had to respond. We were badly outnumbered, but we couldn't let the bonies figure that out, or they'd steamroll us, so we responded to the attack with overwhelming force. We kept the Tommies in reserve, but we sent the bulk of our Cycloners out to greet them.

"See, the turians didn't have full-scale powered armor like our Cyclones, and they are one hell of a force multiplier. The captain figured if they thought we all had Cyclones, that would make them more cautious, give us time to get the fold-comm up and get reinforcements."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"The platoon was gutted. The Ell-Tee bought it, and there wasn't much left of the platoon when Sergeant Terenir called a retreat. I still wish I'd been there, but I was too busy making use of the distraction they gave us.

"Exfiltration was a pain in the ass. The humans were repositioning in response to the lieutenant's attack, and we couldn't risk backtracking with all the activity there. We took a slightly more direct route and ended up literally stumbling right on top of one of their sniper nests.

"It's hard to get a silent kill on someone wearing a hardsuit, especially when you know next to nothing about their internal anatomy.

"When Randis slid the knife in between the armor plating, I remember I kept thinking that I really, really hoped that the red stuff spilling out was blood.

"The spotter managed to get two shots off with this little hand cannon: I've since learned it's an M-37 Weasel, and it was loaded with high explosive anti-mecha rounds. The first shot took down Randis's kinetic barriers when it detonated; the second shot took off half his head. I nearly overheated my Crossfire getting through the spotter's chestplate.

"After that, we forgot about stealth and just moved as fast as our feet could carry us."


	4. The Battle of Hunter HIll: Day 3

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi  
**_The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 3_

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"Third day of the assault, they started hitting us with indirect fire to soften us up, so we hunkered down to ride it out. Several of our sniper posts got taken out - lucky hits, I guess - forcing us to consolidate our position and really turtle up.

"We tried some counterbattery fire with our M440s, but the bonies outnumbered us too much for it to make much difference. We had better luck with the Grizzlies' interdiction lasers shooting down the incoming shells.

"In the end, we knew the big push would be coming once the bonies thought we'd gotten used to the monotony of constant bombardment. We figured we had at least few days.

"We were wrong."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"We put together some targeting data from our recon run the previous day and hoped they were accurate enough to make a difference. Sniper nests are murder on morale and battlefield organization, but they tend to be very lightly fortified, if at all. A single well-placed shell is usually all it takes.

"Now, sometimes, you can't get a bead on an enemy position, and an orbital strike is excessive. That's why Assault Infantry Legions have organic infantry mortar support. The 96th was no exception.

"Still, although our mortars had internal ammunition fabricators, we didn't carry an excess of power cells. Sustained mortar fire eats through them like you wouldn't believe, and we needed those power cells for our other heavy weapons too.

"We could only shell them with regularity for a day, maybe two at the most, before we had to move on whatever advantage it would give us."

* * *

**Codex: Infantry Mortars**

Indirect fire support is a key component of surface warfare, and with air and orbital support impractical for some situations or unreliable due to various conditions that can affect the theater of war, the humble infantry mortar remains the indirect fire weapon of choice, second only to grenade launchers.

Typically operated by a crew of two, Alliance infantry mortars operate on the same basic principle that mortars have used for centuries: a reinforced tube with a sealed end on an incline, into which a mortar shell with a warhead on one end and a contact-detonated chemical propellant on the other is dropped. Even robotechnology did not retire the simple mortar from the battlefield, instead only refining the concept with more powerful explosives and lighter and stronger alloys. The venerable M440 60mm mortar, for example, is a base plate free infantry mortar with a collapsing tripod that allows a single soldier to carry and operate it if necessary, and it has served in the Alliance armory for over a century and a half. Alliance mortars typically use fragmentation, high explosive, or plasma shells and boast higher yields than comparable Citadel mortars, and the M440's lighter design afforded Alliance mortar teams on Shanxi greater mobility than their turian counterparts.

Citadel-designed infantry mortars, however, are far more sophisticated. Built with internal ammunition fabricators, turian infantry mortars only require a steady supply of raw materials and power cells to operate, often with a higher rate of fire than a comparable Alliance mortar crew. They can custom fabricate mortar shells of various yields and use mass accelerator technology to launch the shell at the precise velocity required, allowing the crew to fine tune the range of each shot in a much more precise manner than Alliance mortars.

Since the Relay War, the UEDF has experimented with more sophisticated mortar designs similar to those used by the Citadel, but has deemed them too heavy and bulky for unpowered infantry, redundant for Cycloners, and overall not reliable enough to meet rigorous new standards set in place in response to the difficulties with the LR-90 laser rifle.


	5. The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 4

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi  
**_The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 4_

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"Under the cover of a day's worth of shelling, Colonel Atticus repositioned the legion. A straight-on assault wasn't going to work, not until we took those robots of theirs out of commission, so we were staging a diversionary strike to allow a team to infiltrate and sabotage them.

"We didn't have enough power cells to set up a proper creeping barrage, but we kept the mortar fire up, stopping just before the assault. A pause in the shelling would alert the humans and give them time to prepare for the impending attack... but on that day, that's what we wanted."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"When the shelling stopped, we knew we'd run out of time. We had the Tommies fired up, the Cycloners suited up and ready to go, and the mortars quickly repositioned to hit predesignated kill zones. We even had the laser turrets on some of the Grizzlies switched to manual.

"The rest of us stuck with our laser rifles and prayed it was enough."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"The thing about kinetic barriers is that they do crap against lasers. I speak from experience. Somehow, throughout the entire first assault, we never really got a good look at the rifles most of Hill 120's defenders were using.

"On day four, far too many of us found out the hard way. I was one of the lucky ones. I was moving alongside a Tyrus, using it for cover against the heavier defensive fire, when I got hit. The laser ignored my shields and cut through my hardsuit right here, along my hip. I didn't feel it at first - my leg just went limp, and I stumbled - but after a few seconds of confusion, the pain hit.

"It burned like nothing I'd ever felt before, but it actually saved my life. I was still on the ground, shaking the pain off and trying to find the rest of my section when everything in front of me exploded."

* * *

EOD Specialist Janet Ruckman

"Tango Nine is an equally terrifying and wonderful thing. We EOD specialists share a saying with the combat engineers: 'There is no problem in the human condition that cannot be solved through the proper application of sufficient quantities of high explosives.' The Zentraedi really liked that one, back in the day, so I hear, and it's gotten pretty popular among krogan too.

"The Tango Nine we rigged combined with the mortars' predesignated kill zones slaughtered dozens, maybe hundreds of turians that day and blunted the assault."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"That whole operation was a colossal waste of time, lives, and ammunition. The plan was good, in theory, and the infiltration team had managed to do some damage, but it just wasn't enough to cripple the destroids and give us the opening we needed to take the hill."


	6. The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 5

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi**  
_The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 5_

Sergeant Tertius Carhos

"I served with the 132nd Mobile Artillery Battery on Shanxi. That's exactly what it sounds like: a high-mobility field artillery unit. We use a mix of self-propelled guns and rapid deployment towed artillery - four each to a battery - to provide long-range indirect fire support.

"After we hit dirt side on Shanxi, General Thierix ordered several units to stay in reserve, including the 132nd. We were holding position with the auxiliaries and field hospitals. Now, the blood and gore wasn't too bad. I won't say it was easy dealing with it, but our training prepared us for the kind of damage bullets and bombs can do, at least intellectually.

"We had nothing to prepare us for the constant smell of burned turian flesh.

"Now, burns do happen in combat - incinerate omni-tool modules, flamethrowers, incendiary ammo, incendiary explosives - but there was something more... pervasive about it on Shanxi. Those who died instantly were the lucky ones. I saw soldiers who were cooked alive in their hardsuits by multiple glancing blows, others whose hardsuits were melted and fused with the flesh underneath.

"So when the call for artillery support came from Colonel Atticus, we jumped at the chance to get our licks in. Technically, Atticus didn't have the authority to command the 132nd, but Captain Timmaeus felt assisting the 96th at Hill 120 fell within the guidelines of General Order 17 and ordered us in under his own discretion."

* * *

EOD Specialist Janet Ruckman

"We were screwed.

"We pretty much had that figured when the turians hauled out the real artillery and started shelling us seriously on the fifth day. The Tomahawks were tough - no doubt about that - but even they couldn't take sustained shelling from heavy artillery, and they weren't the most nimble mecha around.

"Fortunately, the fold-comm repairs were almost complete by then. By our best estimates, we only had to hold out for another day or two - three tops - and the cavalry would be on the way.

"Not that that was much comfort to us."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"Keep in mind, most of this is second-hand. I was one of the walking wounded - minus the walking, given the injury to my hip - and shuttled back to one of the field hospitals to recover at the time. Remember, we didn't have medi-gel back then.

"But when the colonel brought in the 132nd, the destroids were naturally the top priority. They took a beating before they were finally destroyed, and then it was a creeping barrage to cover the advance. Excessive, wasteful, and overly cautious even by the most conservative standards, but it worked. By the end of day five, the legion had secured the perimeter around Hill 120.

"After that, though, there was still the tiny matter of actually getting inside."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"Urban fighting ain't got shit on tunnel fighting."


	7. The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 6

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi  
**_The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 6_

Specialist Adrien Kaelos

"Spirits, there's a reason I requested a transfer out of the hastatim. Urban fighting is always messy: no room to maneuver, limited fire support, very little cover, and long firing lanes that force you to advance through a natural kill zone.

"Of course, in turian cities, a lot of that is deliberate.

"Although the specifics were different, all of that applied equally to the complex under Hill 120. It took an hour to advance maybe ten meters of featureless, alloy-lined hallway... and another hour to lose it again. Still, we gained more than we lost in that first day of tunnel fighting, inching our way along.

"Thank the spirits our hardsuits came with hearing protection, though."

* * *

EOD Specialist Janet Ruckman

"Close quarters combat with explosives is an art, one we were damn good at.

"What made us good at it? Well, if we were bad at it, I wouldn't be sitting here, discussing it with you, now would I?

"Sorry, sorry. Touchy subject for me, for reasons I won't go into. Anyway, we didn't use all our Tango Nine around the hill. We kept some in reserve and used it to collapse the main entrance and the garage entrance to the hill's underground complex, in addition to sealing the doors, forcing the turians to come at us through a maintenance tunnel.

"The complex wasn't as big as you might think, as it wasn't meant to be manned full time, but the turians didn't know that.

"The first layer of our internal defenses was an MG position with a pair of century guns, supplemented by grenades."

* * *

Specialist Adrien Kaelos

"For all the fancy weapons the humans had at Shanxi, their machine guns were rather primitive. Spirits, they were still using chemical propellants, and despite the larger slugs, the lower velocity compared to proper mass accelerators meant they didn't do very well against kinetic barriers.

"The grenades, however, were brutally effective in close quarters. Even with our hardsuits' hearing protection, it was deafening.

"To be honest, the fighting was so intense, we lost track of time. It wasn't until we had actually managed secure a solid foothold that we realized we had fought all through the night and into the next morning."

* * *

**Codex: M-100E4 Machine Gun**

The M-100E4 machine gun, also known as the "century gun," is a tri-barreled 12.7x99mm rotary machine gun, the latest iteration of a design over a century old, hence the nickname, and was the UEDF's general purpose machine gun of choice until the Relay War. The century gun can fire from a pintle-mount or bipod or used as a handheld Cyclone weapon.

In its handheld configuration, the century gun's cyclic rate is throttled down from its normal 1,800 rounds per minute to a much more manageable 600 rounds per minute, and it trades out the disintegrating belt feed for a pair of 100-round detachable box magazines. It can interface with a Cyclone's targeting system to provide bullet spread probability cone for greater accuracy in order to compensate for the reduced volume of fire.

After the Relay War, the M-100 series was deemed obsolete due to a combination of ammunition weight and lower velocity as compared to equivalent mass accelerator weapons, rendering it ineffective against kinetic barriers, and it has since been discontinued and removed from active service, replaced by the M-76 Revenant.


	8. The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 7

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi  
**_The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 7_

Specialist Adrien Kaelos

"The colonel didn't bother asking for volunteers. He selected everyone with hastatim experience and assigned us to an ad hoc group with the unenviable task of cracking the deadlock under Hill 120.

"Emphasis on 'dead.'

"A lot of species consider hastatim to be little more than execution squads, but there's far more to them than that. The hastatim are the absolute best when it comes to urban combat or taking a fortified position. Sure, the hastatim request a surrender and kill anyone who refuses to, but do you honestly think the ones who don't surrender would be that easy to kill?

"Of course not. They fight harder than anyone else because they suddenly have nothing left to lose. The hastatim is dirty work, but it's far from easy.

"In any case, it helped us take the facility. They had collapsed the vehicle bay and main entrance, and the complex was well-ventilated, with air scrubbers and multiple separate rooms, preventing us from simply smoking them out with a thermobaric weapon, but there had to be some holes in their defenses, and with ground penetrating radar, we found one."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"In our defense, the comm relay wasn't _meant_ to be a fortified facility. Yes, it had security measures, but few of them were built to survive sustained artillery fire or the collapse of several sections of the complex.

"So, yeah, big ol' air vents meant to make cleaning and maintenance easy, though actually getting into the facility through them would be tricky, since there were very few actual access points. The alarms that secured them were wrecked beyond recognition, so we had no idea they were coming.

"We did get the fold-comm up, though. Now, it was just a matter of whether we would fight to death, surrender, or be saved by something ridiculously improbable that no one could ever predict.

"Hey, given some of the weird shit that happened in the Robotech Wars, that was a perfectly valid possibility."

* * *

Specialist Adrien Kaelos

"We rappelled down the ventilation shaft - not as easy as the vids suggest - and managed to insert ourselves deeper into the complex. We had to cut our way through, and it wasn't precisely the win button we were hoping for, but it let us flank their position and divide their forces."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"When the bonies showed up on our flank, Captain Miller personally lead a section over to help repel the attack, but she took a round in the fighting. We managed to stop the bleeding, but...

"We put it to a vote. The captain wasn't in any position to decide, and we'd done our duty.

"After slagging the Cyclones and destroying any sensitive data we had... we surrendered."

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani

"And after everything - dozens, hundreds dead - the humans surrendered. Just like that, Hill 120 was ours, inside and out. It was the lone piece of good news by then, and in the end, we had to abandon the hill anyway. I was still recuperating, so I heard the worst as the casualties from the rest of the expeditionary force came in.

"It was bad. The humans had that big destroid - what was it called? That's right, the Behemoth - pounding every turian force larger than a platoon. It was only a matter of time before the 96th fell into its sights. General Thierix was reported dead, and there was some confusion as to which ranking officers were still alive to take command or where they even were.

"Colonel Atticus, however, had a plan. He may not have the most stellar reputation, but for all of that, he was decisive. We had prisoners, and the human capital wasn't far from our position. Taking the prisoners and the wounded, we headed for the city."

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson

"Gotta hand it to the bonies. They never flinch. Even with the Behemoth flattening every major contingent of theirs on the continent, they didn't panic. Instead, they gathered their troops up - along with us, as their prisoners - and marched for Taiyuan.

"We were treated well - a damn sight better than we expected, really - but that didn't change the fact that we were essentially human shields."

* * *

Specialist Adrien Kaelos

"I did mention how nasty urban fighting was, right? But compared to being caught out in the open by that... _thing?_ It was a gamble, and at first, we didn't even try to secure any significant portion of the city, but it gave us breathing room and, more importantly, a place to triage and treat the wounded without having to worry about a half-meter explosive shell caving the roof in."


	9. The Battle of Hunter Hill: Biographies

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi**  
_The Battle of Hunter Hill: Biographies_

Captain Helena Miller did not survive the injuries she received during the fighting under Hunter Hill. Although both Fox Company's combat medics and the 96th's field surgeons did their best to save the human officer, the limitations of Fox Company's medical expertise and supplies and the biological barriers that rendered turian skills and medical supplies all but useless meant they were unable to resuscitate Captain Miller after complications arose during emergency surgery. Three days after the 96th entered Taiyuan, Captain Miller was pronounced dead.

* * *

Corporal Dennis Nicholson reenlisted after the war but was court martialed and discharged for gross incompetence in 2164 after a misfired mortar round during a live fire exercise on Shanxi left two turian liaisons dead and one severely wounded. The inquiry officially concluded that the incident was unintentional and cleared him of criminal charges. Nicholson requested his current status and whereabouts remain undisclosed.

* * *

EOD Specialist Janet Ruckman finished her tour of duty two years into the Relay War but remained a turian prisoner until the end of hostilities a year later. To mark the occasion, in a tradition dating back to the First Robotech War, Specialist Ruckman proposed to turian Field Surgeon Veritan Aurelius. The two were wed five days later, much to the groom's bemusement. After the war, Aurelius was assigned to serve as a medical liaison to the Alliance on Shanxi, and after retiring from active service, opened a clinic on the outskirts of Datong, which the couple ran until it was destroyed in an explosion in 2177, killing Dr. Aurelius. Mrs. Aurelius still lives on Shanxi and now works for Crossing Bridges, a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering closer ties between the Sentinel Alliance and Citadel space.

* * *

Colonel Delian Atticus continued to serve with distinction and command the 96th throughout the Relay War, as detailed in other segments of this program. After the war, Colonel Atticus was promoted to general and given command of the 10th Combined Arms Division. He served in that capacity until 2163, when he was reassigned to an instructor position at Cipritine Hill Military Academy, where he still serves today.

* * *

Sergeant Tertius Carhos retired from active duty in 2162, declining a recommendation for Officer Candidacy School. Carhos now serves as a groundskeeper on the Citadel.

* * *

Corporal Actaeus Endurani recovered from his injuries at Hunter Hill and continued to serve with distinction throughout the war but he was never able to fully regain mobility in his left leg and was medically discharged after the war. In 2168, Endurani published Memoirs of Shanxi, which became a bestseller within weeks and served as the basis for portions of this program. He currently lives in Spaedar on the colony of Taetrus.

* * *

After the war, Specialist Adrien Kaelos retired from active duty and returned home to Cipritine, where he married his childhood sweetheart, Indin Retarius. Kaelos currently runs a multimedia store on the Citadel specializing in imports from Sentinel space.


	10. Ballad of Metal Angels:Setting the Stage

**Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi**  
_The Ballad of Metal Angels: Setting the Stage_

"For those among the Citadel, it is easy to discount the importance of the aerospace war over Shanxi, to assume that humanity's obsession with fighter combat has colored its portrayal of history. Nothing could be further from the truth.

"Indeed, it is humanity's history that spawned its obsession with the veritech fighter."

* * *

Second Lieutenant Alan "Razor" Sharpe, Halo 21

"First dogfight against turian fighters? Whoo! It was... well, it was incredibly unfair. I actually kinda feel sorry for them.

"Don't get me wrong. They were good pilots; they knew how to fly. But when you're flying a fighter and using tactics all built on the same principles your enemy discarded as obsolete a century and a half ago, you're pretty much screwed.

"As Halo 21, I was leader of second squad when the bonies showed up. We were sent to escort Wrecker Squadron in to hit the turian cap ships with heavy missiles.

"At first, we held our own missiles in reserve. We didn't know what kind of firepower this new enemy would have, and we weren't carrying any dedicated space to space missiles, just the Piranhas in our internal bays.

"In the end, it didn't make a difference. They didn't have missiles, and their guns were underpowered. In the time it would have taken for them to penetrate our veritechs' armor, we were already outmaneuvering them. Hanson even decided to get fancy and grappled one. Show off.

"A couple of them were smart enough to see what happened and jumped to FTL. They FTLed back in, trying for a boom and zoom, but they just didn't have the firepower, and after the third pass, we had their pattern locked down. On the fourth pass, we blew one of them to bits while he was still getting his bearings back from dropping out of FTL. The other one smartened up and didn't try for a fifth pass.

"It was a turkey shoot. We didn't even need to use missiles.

"Can't say the Wreckers had the same luck, though. Turian ships have some pretty impressive point defenses."

* * *

Sergeant Petra "Vice" Santiago, Wrecker 13

"I flew with Wrecker Squadron in that first skirmish, Wrecker 13. Our fighters were loaded down with Rampart anti-ship torpedoes: powerful, but they're no reflex missiles.

"The Halos might as well have stayed home for all the threat the turian fighters posed, but their point defense is nothing to scoff at. They might not be designed to deal with the missile or mecha density ours are, but it's all in a single package, those GArDIAN lasers of theirs, which are also designed to tag enemy frigates at close range.

"So to sum up, they've got less point defense overall, but a thicker anti-mecha turret system, one with the firepower to eventually slag a frigate.

"Not fun.

"We lost Carly and Rodeo on the way in, but the rest of us managed to get through the worst of it. The Baldur's a tough little fighter, and we've got better anti-laser defenses, so despite the firepower those GArDIAN lasers had, it still took more than a few hits to take us down.

"Even so, we dove for the target's hull rather than try to maintain the attack run. Going to battloid was a lifesaver. Standing on the hull, we were able to slowly whittle away their point defense in the area until we could take off and hit them with our Ramparts with impunity.

"Not nearly as glamorous as what they show in the vids, but it got the job done."

* * *

Lieutenant Commander Keenan Doskias, PFS Defender

"I was Guns on the PFS Defender. Err, that is, Tactical Officer. I wasn't part of Flight Ops, but even I could hear the Air Boss going nuts over his fighters getting slaughtered. With those enemy fighters coming in, I marked them as priority targets for the GArDIAN. I then turned my attention back to working on the main gun's firing solution on the orbital defense platform we were targeting. I had figured that would do the trick.

"I was wrong.

"They were tougher than they looked. The GArDIAN lasers only took two of them down on the initial pass, so I altered the firing pattern for focused fire to compensate, but it was too late. They were already under our defensive fire umbrella. There's an automatic cut out that stops the GArDIAN lasers from firing below a certain incline to prevent it accidentally firing into our own hull.

"Of course, there's a manual override and manual backup controls, but they hadn't been used outside of drills for centuries. Normally, when an enemy fighter gets under the defensive umbrella, we sic our own fighters on them.

"The captain had Helm pull a roll to shake them off. Once under the defensive umbrella, a fighter can just match V and bomb the hull until it runs out of ordnance, but that's a lot harder to do with the ship rolling under you. With our fighters already down, I scrambled gunners to the nearby turrets to manually pick off any that managed to cling on.

"Spirits, the last thing we expected were for those fighters to have transformed into giant robots and actually walk on the hull. That rendered the roll totally ineffective. Half the turrets I'd designated were destroyed before the gunners even got there. The other half didn't last much longer.

"When the torpedoes hit, we had no choice but to withdraw."

"Unfortunately, we were unable to interview any turian fighter pilots who participated in that first battle, as the only survivor on record was shot down and killed less than two years later at the Second Battle of Telos."

* * *

**Codex: VF/A-20 Baldur Veritech Fighter**

The VF/A-20 Baldur veritech fighter is an older model veritech fighter that served during the Relay War. Unlike the current generation VF-23 Sif and VF/B-26 Thor, the Baldur is a fully multirole design, meant to serve both as an aerospace superiority fighter and an attack fighter. In fighter and guardian modes, the Baldur is easily identified by its distinct forward-swept wings, which gives it considerable responsiveness in atmospheric flight. It also uses a virtual cockpit interface that provides the pilot with an unobstructed 360-degree view of his fighter's surroundings, regardless of current mode.

In keeping with its multipurpose design, the Baldur's internal armament is minimal, an array of forty-two Piranha multipurpose missiles and a pair of wingtip-mounted laser cannons. It boasts two undercarriage hardpoints for gun pods, another two undercarriage hardpoints for additional ordnance, two hardpoints on its dorsal surface, and two hardpoints on each wing, for a total of eight hardpoints.

During the Relay War, the Baldur was typically issued with a GU-29 85mm rifled cannon for its primary weapon and a P-3 plasma lance for its secondary, as despite the energy draw of the power hungry P-3, many pilots considered the five meter blade of superheated plasma invaluable for carving holes in turian ships through their conformal kinetic barriers. Advances in metallurgy and the implementation of semi-conformal kinetic barriers have since rendered this tactic obsolete.

The UEDF retired the Baldur from active service in 2172 in favor of the VF-23 Sif and VF/B-26 Thor, both of which integrate mass effect technology from the ground up. Despite the lack of space for mass effect cores to provide inertial damping and kinetic barriers, the Baldur is still popular among CDMs.

* * *

**Codex: UEDF Mecha Squadron Organization**

The United Defense Force utilizes a uniform organizational structure for nearly all mecha squadrons across all branches, though some specialized units, of course, differ from the standard. The standard UEDF mecha squadron consists of fifteen mecha, broken down into one command team of three (numbered 01-03) and two squads of six (numbered 11-16 and 21-26). Each squad is further broken down into teams of three (11-13, 14-16, 21-23, and 24-26). When serving independently, the three-mecha teams typically adopt a color callsign and renumber (1-3).

This structure provides UEDF mecha squadrons with both redundancy and versatility, allowing them to handle a wide variety of situations even if one or more mecha are unavailable, whether due shortages, maintenance issues, or combat losses. It also allows the formation of ad hoc squadrons of mixed mecha for specialized missions with minimal confusion.


End file.
